Sunday, August 30, 2015

I am a big fan of Japanese design. I like traditional
Japanese clothing and home interiors. I love the clean, austere lines combined
with graceful decorative elements that, for me, define the Japanese style. I
often wear a Japanese garment called a ‘hippari’ (in fact I’m wearing one now
as I write this), which was the working person’s short kimono, worn over pants.
I make these for myself using a pattern by a company called Folkwear, which
specializes in traditional clothing from around the world.

One of the traditional Japanese dyeing techniques is Shibori,
which you can think of as a formal form of tie-dye. Just this last weekend I
had the opportunity to take a class in this decorative technique. I was
thrilled at the chance to improve my hipparis by adding traditional design
elements.

pieces made in the class by various members

The morning of the class I read an
article in the Washington Post about a new form of political correctness: a
concept called ‘cultural appropriation.’ The article describes a “war” in the
art world in which it has become common to attack “any artist or artwork that
incorporates ideas from another culture, no matter how thoughtfully or
positively. A work can reinvent the material or even serve as a tribute, but no
matter. If artists dabble outside their own cultural experiences, they’ve
committed a creative sin.”

I told the people in my Shibori class that we were all
guilty of a terrible crime: we were racist imperialists plagiarizing another
culture. We all laughed and continued on with the lesson. If that sounds absurd
to you, it is, but here’s an example from the article where the attacks had a
real-world impact:

This summer, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has
been dogged by charges of
cultural insensitivity and racism for its “Kimono Wednesdays.” At the event,
visitors were invited to try on a replica of the kimono worn by Claude
Monet’s wife, Camille, in the painting “La Japonaise.” The historically
accurate kimonos were made in Japan for this very purpose. Still, Asian
American activists and their supporters besieged the
exhibit with signs like “Try on the kimono: Learn what it’s like to be a racist
imperialist today!” Others railed against “Yellow-Face @ the MFA” on Facebook.
The museum eventually apologized and changed the program so that the kimonos
were available for viewing only. Still, activists complained that the
display invited a “creepy Orientalist gaze”…

It is far from clear that the appropriation police speak for
the people and communities whose cultural honor they claim to defend. The
kimono protest, for instance, found little support from Japanese Americans
living in the Boston area; indeed, many actively
backed the museum’s exhibit, as did the Japanese consulate.

Art, not to mention culture itself, is a living expression
of human beings as they interact with the world. Cultures have always
assimilated elements from their neighbors and become more dynamic and
interesting as a result. The Europeans who came to North America and interacted
with Native Americans assimilated many of the values of the native peoples. It
has been argued that the iconic American—the cowboy—is a fusion of European and
Native American cultures.

And to continue with the Japanese theme, much of what we
think of as Japanese, including their clothing and their language, were
‘appropriated’ from China many centuries ago.

Yes there were examples in the past when oppressed cultures’
artistic expressions were stolen. But. as with so many movements, some
proponents take it to the extreme.

Friday, August 7, 2015

This summer marks the 70th anniversary of the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the beginning of an era
of nuclear fears that dominated the childhoods of people of my generation. We
were raised in fear. I can remember civil defense drills when we marched
single-file out of our classroom and stood against the lockers in the hallways;
training for what to do when the bomb dropped. My husband Arthur, who was born
six weeks after the bombs dropped on Japan, remembers marching from the school
to a train depot; he never knew where they’d have been taken if war had started.
Our parents were just as terrified by the nuclear brinkmanship our leaders were
engaged in.

I was reminded of this when I read a
column by Fareed Zakaria in today’s Washington Post, about the opposition to
President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Zakaria paints Obama as an optimist
resisting a sea of pessimists. As an example of a pessimist he quotes John
McCain saying, last year, that the
world is “in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime” (which includes
World War II and the Cold War).

Zakaria then goes on to show how a pessimistic attitude has
been a common American reaction to events for decades now:

In an essay in
1989, Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington noted that the United States
was experiencing its fifth wave of that kind of pessimism since the 1950s.

First, he explained, Sputnik
shocked the United States, and by the early 1960s, the country was convinced
that the Soviet Union was on a path to overtake it economically,
technologically and militarily. When the oil shocks of the 1970s hit, people
saw the Middle East’s petro states as the world’s new power brokers. By the end
of the 1970s, with the Soviet Union modernizing its nuclear arsenal and on the
march — from Afghanistan to Central America — scores of commentators prophesied
that Moscow was winning the Cold War. And when Huntington wrote his essay,
conventional wisdom was that an invincible Japan would soon become the world’s
No. 1 economic power.

None of these came to pass. The pessimists were wrong. The
optimists, who saw the unique power and vitality of America as strengths that
would enable us to overcome obstacles, were right.

Nowadays the pessimists are warning about a nuclear Iran
being an existential threat to the United States. That’s as absurd as George W.
Bush’s warnings about Iraq in 2003, and yet people still believe it. Just as
absurd is the belief that ‘The Terrorists’ are an existential threat, yet our
country’s policies are built around the need to overcome this ‘threat’ at all
costs.

Yesterday I talked with two people, in completely separate
conversations, who are both convinced that the economy is about to go into
free-fall and the dollar will soon be worthless. “The only thing left of value
will be gold,” they both nervously told me. Needless to say, they were both extremely
pessimistic about the future of this country.

There’s power in fear. Fear makes people passive. They are less likely to challenge their
leaders. Fear causes people to shrink their
expectations of life so that all that matters is survival. When a citizenry is
afraid, they will only ask their government for protection. They won’t ask for
a decent life, educational opportunities, good roads, decent health care, etc.
When there is an existential threat, these priorities pale in comparison to the
importance of survival. Spending half of the federal budget on defense looks like
a bargain, not a theft.

About Me

I'm a philosopher, writer, videographer, and entrepreneur. In 2013 I've released a new book, "We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity." I'm the co-author with my husband Arthur Hancock of "The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity.